


nobody asks to be a hero (it just sometimes turns out that way)

by Good_News_Everyone



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Espionage, F/M, Pre-Canon, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-08 02:11:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3191420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Good_News_Everyone/pseuds/Good_News_Everyone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of how Clint Barton met Natasha Romanoff was less ‘Boy Meets Girl’ and more ‘Spy Vs Spy’. It spanned eight years, six continents, at least one defection and a whole lot of explosions. </p><p>It started like this; a bombardment, a stolen uniform, a briefcase of missile plans, and her gun to his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**New York, Present Day**

~

It was rush hour in New York, and all across the city tired, cranky office drones were cramming themselves sardine-like into train carriages or crawling their way homeward through the evening traffic, car horns honking in angry cacophony. 

Meanwhile, on a shabby Brooklyn street, Clint Barton whistled tunelessly as he pulled down and locked the roll door over his little shopfront. It had been a long and tedious day, full of demanding, entitled customers, and he was already anticipating an evening at home with a TiVo full of Dog Cops when a shout caught his attention.

‘Bro!’

Clint turned his head towards the street, his eyebrows raising at the sudden appearance of three large men in matching maroon-and-yellow tracksuits.

‘You’re Barton, right, bro?’ said the moustached thug in front in a heavy Eastern European accent.

‘That’s what it says on the sign,’ said Clint, gesturing to the messily scrawled ‘Barton’s Bargains’ emblazoned over the pawn shop. ‘What can I do for you, fellas?’

‘We wanna buy from you, bro,’ said Moustache. ‘Heard you’re the guy to come to, you want anything in this hood.’

‘Well, I haven’t been round here more than a couple months, but it’s flattering to know I’m getting a reputation,’ Clint said, laughing. ‘Look, I’m closed for the day, but I open at eight tomorrow. Come round then and-‘

‘You don’t understand, bro,’ said Moustache. ‘We wanna make a big purchase. Seriously big.’ He extended his thumb and index finger at right angles and pointed them at Clint, mouthing the word ‘bang!’ silently.

‘Jesus,’ Clint muttered, looking around. No one seemed to have noticed, but… ‘Not here, are you nuts? C’mon, this way.’ He ducked into the dingy alley beside the shop, the three men following close behind him.

Once in the shadows of the alleyway, he turned. ‘So what makes you think I have what you’re looking for?’

‘We heard you sell firearms, bro,’ said Moustache, crossing his arms. ‘We wanna buy some. All there is to it.’

‘Lotta pawn stores around here sell guns,’ Clint retorted. ‘Why’d you come to me?’

 ‘Other places don’t got the stuff we want. Besides, they want permits, registrations….all those pesky kinda things.’ Moustache waved a dismissive hand. ‘Bro named Artie Parks told us you were the one to come to, if you wanna skip all the paperwork. Said you got him that custom Glock he used to knock over the strip club in Little Irkutsk.’

 ‘Artie sent you my way, huh?’ Clint relaxed slightly. ‘Right, okay. What was it you fellas were looking for, then?’

‘We want heavy weaponry, bro,’ said Moustache, leaning forward. ‘Kalash, TEC-9s, maybe even RPGs if you can get them.’ He paused. ‘Pay you double if you can get Stark guns, though. Stark is best, everybody knows that, but hard to get since he don’t sell to anyone but the military.’

‘Serious stuff,’ muttered Clint. ‘I’m betting you don’t want me asking any questions about why you want military-grade assault gear?’

‘Smart guy.’

Clint nodded absently, already deep in thought. ‘Ok, look. I can get you a couple of AKs by next week, couple of cases of ammo as well. You’re in luck with the Stark gear – I think I can get you a couple of his new rifles and maybe even a rocket launcher if you gimme, say, a month. It’ll cost you, though, I’m not gonna lie.’

‘You can find this kinda stuff that fast, bro?’ Moustache asked, raising one thick caterpillar eyebrow.

‘I got contacts,’ said Clint, flashing a quick grin. ‘I can get you what you want. Trust me.’

Moustache nodded. ‘Is all I needed to know, bro,’ he said, and swung a meaty ham-hock fist directly into Clint’s face.

Clint staggered back, ears ringing. A second punch hit him in the solar plexus and he collapsed to the ground, groaning. He dimly heard Moustache yelling to his friends and felt them half carrying, half shoving him into a van before the world went black.

 

~

Clint woke up cuffed to a chair in a warehouse full of armed, angry tracksuited men.

‘Okay…’ he said hoarsely, looking around. ‘This looks bad.’

‘You damn right is bad, bro,’ said a new voice, old and creaky, off to his left. Clint craned his neck, and the owner of the voice stepped into view.

The newcomer was a skinny old man, all in white, leaning heavily on a walking stick. He was diminutive next to the musclebound hulks surrounding him, but any impression of frailty was offset by the cold, pitiless look in his eyes. Clint knew at once, instinctively, that this was the man who held the leashes of the attack dogs around him.

‘We look into you, Barton,’ said the old man. ‘You orphan, yes? Run off from foster home and join the circus.’ He snorted, and the men around him chortled sycophantically.

‘Hey, I learned a lot of valuable life skills there,’ Clint protested, and was rewarded with a thump in the ribs from the old man’s cane. He felt something crack in his side and winced.

‘Then you join army,’ the old man continued. ‘Not last long there either, eh, bro? Dishonourable discharge. Insurbordinate, they say, and stealing from army stores. Not good career move. So then you wander around country doing jobs as hired muscle, rob a bank or two, hold up gas stations. Eventually you have enough money for you own little store, settle down in city that never sleeps. Is good, yes? Is American Dream.’ He smirked humourlessly.

‘But this where dream ends, bro.’ He poked Clint in the chest with the cane. ‘You set up pawn shop, making okay living, but you get greedy. You run side business as well. Sell weapons you get from old friends in army, split profit with them. Is good plan, very good. Except that _we_ run weapons in this part of town. Many people in this city who pay us top grade for Stark guns, very hard to get. What makes you think you can come in our hood and take our business? Small fry like you, working all alone? No one looking for you, no one miss you. So now we make you disappear.’

Clint had been slumped against his bonds, the picture of despondency, but at the old man’s last few sentences a smirk curled the corner of his mouth.

The old man’s eyes flared in anger, and he whacked Clint viciously across the side of the head with his cane. ‘Is _funny_ to you, bro?’ he snarled ‘You want to die that much, eh?’

‘Well, yeah,’ said Clint, snorting a little. ‘I mean, no, I don’t particularly want to die just yet, but yeah, you guys are fucking _hilarious_. You made fucking _finger guns_ to signal you wanted to buy from me! And matching tracksuits, really? Your bunch of _gopniki_ look more like a jogging group than any kind of serious gang. Between the outfits and the ‘bro’ this, ‘bro’ that I keep expecting someone to break out a keg. And that’s not even getting into _your_ wardrobe, Mr Walking Fashion Crime, seriously, Labor Day was _months_ ago-‘

The blow this time was hard enough to split Clint’s scalp.

‘You _die_ , Barton,’ snarled the old man, shaking with rage. ‘It will not be quick, now. I take you apart piece by piece before we kill you and feed you to the dogs.’

‘You know, I highly doubt that,’ Clint said, tilting his head up and looking the boss straight in the eye despite the blood running down his face. ‘There seem to be a few things you’re confused about. First off: I’m not working alone.’

There was a crash of breaking glass at the back of the warehouse, and one of the tracksuited thugs let out a shout. He was quickly drowned out by the _crack-crack_ of gunfire, followed by the _thud_ of flesh meeting concrete.

‘The second one is,’ Clint continued as the old man whipped around towards the commotion, his bodyguards moving forward to face this new threat, ‘I’m not, in fact, an arms dealer. It’s your own fault, really, you people don’t exactly have office hours, it’s impossible to find where you hang out. Only way to find the boss of the weapons ring was to try and set myself up as competition. Knew you’d want to meet me then, either to try and scare me off or to shut me down.’

There was screaming now, over the staccato of gunfire. The old man saw a slim, black clad figure dart from cover briefly, a ribbon of red hair trailing behind it, before a cluster of his men descended and hid the intruder from view. Within thirty seconds, all of them were on the floor and their attacker was nowhere to be seen.

Beside the old man, Moustache mouthed _Just one?_ incredulously.

‘The third thing is,’ Clint’s voice continued from behind him, ‘I really did learn a lot of useful skills in the circus. Like, just for the sake of example – how to slip a pair of cuffs in ten seconds flat.’

The old man whipped back around again, and was greeted with a fist to the jaw.

‘I usually don’t like hitting senior citizens,’ Clint said, shaking out his hand, ‘but for you, and that damn cane, I’ll make an exception.’

~

Clint snuck towards the clamour at the end of the warehouse as stealthily as he could with a trussed up octogenarian slung over one shoulder, swinging the cane in his free hand.  When he could hear the crackling sound of Natasha’s Widow’s Bite he stopped and whistled twice, low, to let her know he was there.

‘You’re late, Barton!’ he heard her call from the other side of a pile of crates. ‘You’re slipping if you can’t take out one senior citizen and a handful of hired thugs by yourself.’

‘I was a little tied up there for a while, sue me,’ he called. ‘How’s things going back there?’

‘Almost done,’ she called back. ‘It’d be faster if you got off your ass and gave me some cover fire, though.’

‘Coming right up, Tash!’ he shouted cheerfully. Depositing his unconscious burden behind the cover of the crates, he neatly clotheslined a running goon with the cane, snagged his pistol, and proceeded to shoot out the knees of Natasha’s opponents with terrifying accuracy. With both of them working in concert, the remainder of the gang wasn’t even a challenge. 

Natasha turned towards Clint as he strolled towards her, neatly stepping around the collapsed piles of groaning mafiosos. Holstering one of her pistols, she gave him a quick once-over from head to toe, stopping at the jagged split in his scalp where the man in white had hit him. She reached out and poked the crusted blood with her gloved fingers, Clint flinching away slightly from her touch.

‘You provoked him, didn’t you.’ she said with a sigh. ‘You couldn’t just sit and wait for backup to arrive?’

‘I really hate this habit you have of poking my injuries after a mission,’ Clint said mildly. ‘They do hurt, y’know.’

‘Good,’ Natasha said, still prodding at his head. ‘I live in hope it’ll remind you not to be an idiot who gets himself unnecessarily injured next time.’

‘He was bad-mouthing the circus!’ Clint protested. Natasha gave him an unimpressed look. ‘What? Besides, I had my knight in shining Kevlar coming to save me.’

‘You make a lousy damsel in distress,’ Natasha said dryly. ‘You don’t have the bone structure for a tiara.’

‘Lies and slander. I’m the fairest in the land, that’s how the story works,’ Clint said, grinning. ‘God, it’s good to be done with this mission. Thought they were never gonna make a move, I had to talk that idiot Artie into holding up one of their clubs just so they’d get wind of me.’

‘‘They bought your cover, then?’

‘Yup, all went smooth as butter,’ he said. ‘Did you have to set me up as such a broke, deadbeat loser though? Running a pawnshop doesn’t exactly print money, I haven’t had a decent meal for six months.’

‘The whole point of this mission was to set you up as the kind of man both desperate and unethical enough to sell heavy arms to organised criminals, and stupid enough to set up shop in the middle of the territory of the biggest arms dealers in New York,’ she said, reloading with quick, efficient movements, ‘so yes, I did.’

‘Well, I still acted the shit out of it,’ Clint said, slinging the old man over his shoulder again with a grunt. ‘Might not be as good as you, but I can hold a cover.’

‘It’s not particularly hard to do when your ‘cover’ is exactly the same as your life history,’ Natasha pointed out. ‘Up until the point where while you were being court-martialled for insubordination, instead of being kicked out of the army a black-suited spook turned up and told you that you were joining a shadowy government agency which deals with matters beyond the comprehension of the general public.’

‘I’m still waiting for my neuralyser,’ Clint mused idly. ‘Anyway, come on, pay up.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I won the bet, pay up,’ Clint grinned. ‘I seem to remember _someone_ in this room laying a hundred bucks I didn’t have the attention span for a months-long op.’

‘Yes, because I know that the best way to get you to do something is to tell you that you can’t do it,’ Natasha retorted. ‘Which, as we’ve just demonstrated, works perfectly.’

‘You say that like I didn’t know exactly what you were doing,’ Clint fired back. ‘And I still won the bet.’

‘ _You_ say that like I didn’t _know_ you knew and that you’d do it anyway, just to prove that you couldn’t be so easily manipulated.’

There was a pause.

‘You are a frighteningly devious woman,’ Clint said. 'This is why I never play poker with you.'

‘Good. You shouldn’t, your tells are much too obvious for someone who makes their living in espionage,’ said Natasha dryly. ‘But technically, I suppose you did win the bet. Let’s drop off Monochrome Man here and I’ll buy you dinner with your winnings.’

 

**Stuttgart, Germany, Two Months Later**

~

‘So how did you two meet?’ their hostess asked, leaning across the dining table and blinking huge eyes innocently at the two of them.

It was the middle of winter in Stuttgart, and the wind howled fiercely outside the windows of the cosy bungalow. All four members of the dinner party were pleasantly warm, however, a combination of the crackling fire and the rather good wine that had accompanied their meal.  

Clint smiled charmingly and wrapped his arm around Natasha’s shoulder. ‘Weeeelll,’ he drawled, letting the Midwestern vowels he’d long since trained out of his speech slip through. ‘It all started when these new folks moved into the neighbourhood, you know? And none of us kids knew a thing about them, ‘cept that the house was kind of dark and scary, so we stayed away.’ He gave a sheepish grin ( _kids, what’re you gonna do, right?)_.

‘But then one day,’ he continued, taking another sip of wine, ‘one of my friends lost his football over the back fence, and I got pegged to be the one to go get it, on accounts of I’m the only one tall enough to get over the fence. So I climb over into that yard, and I’m creeping through the grass looking for this damn toy, and then I look up. And there’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, standing right there holding my friend’s ball.’

‘And you’ve been together ever since?’

Clint smiled at Natasha. ‘Well, we lost touch a couple times over the years, but we always seemed to find each other again. And after a while, I realised I couldn’t go on like that, so the next time we met I asked her to stay with me, and she said yes.’

Elizabeth laughed and clapped delightedly. ‘Oh, that is just so sweet! Nancy, Carlton, I think you two must be one of those couples that’s just meant to be. Isn’t that right, honey?’

Rick smiled, and wordlessly laid his hand over his wife’s.

Natasha smiled sweetly. ‘I guess we are,’ she said, leaning against Clint’s shoulder.

Later that night, in the quiet of their own house, Natasha leaned back in her chair and let out a sigh of exasperation.

‘Something up, Tasha?’ asked Clint, flopping down beside her.

‘Do you always have to tell that story when we’re undercover as a couple?’ she said, a trace of annoyance in her voice. ‘One of these days we’re going to be caught out, if you keep sticking to the same tale.’

‘Hey, it’s like the old cons at the circus used to tell me,’ he shrugged. ‘The best lie is the one that’s mostly true. Easier to remember that way.’

‘I still don’t like leaving a trail like that.’

‘Who are they going to tell?’ Clint asked reasonably. ‘To Rick and Elizabeth, we’re an ordinary American couple, recently assigned to the army base here, just like them. Rick’s not a talker and Elizabeth barely speaks German, so she’s not gossiping with the rest of the neighbourhood. They’re not likely to be talking to anyone we might have crossed paths with in the past.’

‘I suppose you have a point,’ Natasha conceded. ‘We should go to sleep. You’re due at the base at oh-six-hundred tomorrow - if you get up on time I’ll make you coffee.’

~

The story of how Natasha and Clint actually met was, as a matter of fact, not dissimilar from the version he’d told to their friendly new neighbours.

The real version, of course, happened when both of them were about ten years older and a hundred times deadlier than implied in that charming little all-American fable.

For ‘scary old house’, read ‘Russian military compound’. For ‘friend’, read ‘high-up member of the US military’. For ‘football’, read ‘schematics and launch codes for the latest Stark missiles’.

But otherwise, the details were more or less the same.

 

**Somewhere in Western Russia, Eight Years Ago**

Clint lowered the unconscious body of the sentry to the floor, quickly scanning the area for further threats. The man had clearly been expecting a quiet shift, if the small pile of junk food and dirty magazines was any indication. He had definitely _not_ been expecting a black-clad secret agent to free-climb up the side of the guard tower, kick through the reinforced window, and punch him in the face.

‘I’m in,’ he muttered quietly into his comm. ‘Guard has been neutralised. Searching for the objective now.’

‘ _Roger that, Hawkeye_ ,’ Sitwell’s voice crackled over the earpiece. ‘ _The diversion team is due to hit the main gate at oh-two-hundred hours. You have fifteen minutes to secure the objective before the extraction team arrives at the southeast tower._ ’

‘Twenty bucks says I can do it in ten.’

‘ _No one here will take your bets any more, Barton, we all know better by now,’_ said Sitwell. ‘ _Get the schematics and get out of there, no showboating.’_

‘None of you are any fun,’ Clint groused. He quickly stripped off the guard’s uniform, shrugged it on over his form-fitting SHIELD outfit and headed off at a brisk clip, pausing only to tie the guard securely to his chair.

The base was standard Soviet-era issue; dank, depressing gray concrete as far as the eye could see, surrounded on all sides by dense forest. It was dark and quiet at this time of night, and Clint easily evaded the few guards on patrol as they strolled past, chatting idly.

The intel they’d received had put the schematics somewhere in the south quarter, under heavy security. It didn’t take long for Clint to find the room - a stealthy glance through the bulletproof window confirmed three guards sitting around a table on which lay a stainless steel briefcase. Two of the guards were bull-shouldered, shaven-headed men armed to the teeth, the third a slim woman with a single handgun on her hip. Her face was turned away from the door, and all Clint could see of her was her ear and a single curl of red hair escaping from under her field cap.

A quick glance at his watch informed him it was twelve seconds to 0200; he pressed himself against the wall beside the door and counted down silently in his head. _Three, two, one…_

The first explosion rocked the base precisely on cue, followed closely by a second and a third, then shortly after by the shrill whooping of the base’s klaxons. Clint waited a few seconds longer before he started pounding frantically on the door.

 _’We’re under enemy fire!’_ he barked in Russian as soon as one of the burly guards opened the door. _’Their objective seems to be the missile plans, they’re targeting this quadrant specifically. Major Vorhoff says to move them to the secondary secure site in the west block vaults. Quickly, let’s go!’_

The two men exchanged glances before heading towards the door. _‘We’ll take point,_ ’ said one of them. _‘You two follow behind us with the case,_ ’ and then they were gone. Clint grabbed the handle of the briefcase, already mentally congratulating himself on a job well done, when he heard a click and looked up into the barrel of a Glock held by the last of the three guards.

She was younger than he’d thought at first glance – even younger than him – and prettier as well, although the blank, focused look on her face gave her flawless features the slightly abstract, inhuman look of an exquisitely carved statue. Her hands, however, were perfectly steady on the gun trained right between Clint’s eyes.

 _’Soldier, what is this?’_ Clint asked, eyeing the gun apprehensively. _’We need to get out of here, fast. They could breach the gates at any moment-‘_

‘Don’t bother,’ she interrupted, in perfect, accentless English. ‘You’re not a soldier at this base.’

 _’I don’t understand English,’_ Clint said, plastering a confused look on his face. _’What are you-‘_

‘Spare me,’ she said disdainfully. ‘Your uniform doesn’t fit you. It’s tight across the shoulders – I can only assume the man you took it from was rather smaller than you. Also, you speak perfect, idiomatic Russian – it must have taken you quite some time to perfect.’ She smiled, a white razor-slash of a grin. ‘Unfortunately for you, this base is right on the border, and the majority of the soldiers here have Ukrainian blood – and the associated accent. There are a few other native Muscovites, but I know most of them and I’m fairly certain none of them wear American-issue combat boots.’

Clint’s shoulders dropped a little, and he stepped back from the table, letting his hands fall to his sides.

‘You’re very good,’ he said admiringly. ‘Our intel didn’t mention anyone like you in the guards on site. KGB, I assume?’

‘Perhaps. You’ll soon find out,’ she said. ‘We’ll be spending a lot of time together in the near future. I’d like to have a nice, long chat about who you work for and what their plans are.’

‘I’d love to stay and get to know you better, sweetheart,’ said Clint ‘but unfortunately, I’ve got a plane to catch, so I’m going to have to cut and run.’

Clint’s hand shot out faster than a normal person could follow, flinging the two small metal discs he’d palmed towards the woman’s face. She ducked instinctively, letting off a shot which grazed his shoulder, and the devices hit the wall, exploding into a billow of smoke which quickly filled the small room.

Clint lunged forward for the briefcase, only to have his legs swept out from under him. He hit the ground hard, his flailing arm hitting the table leg as he fell; he yanked the table onto its side and heard a clang as the steel case hit the ground. Grabbing blindly in the direction of the noise, his fingers closed around a cold steel handle; he scooped the case up, rolled towards the exit and ran like hell.

Behind him, he could hear the woman shouting for backup over her radio and the crack of pistol fire. Sharp pain bloomed between his shoulderblades and he stumbled, swearing loudly, but kept running.

 _‘Hawkeye, what’s your status?’_ Sitwell barked over the comm.

‘I’ve got the intel, coming in hot!’ Clint yelled. ‘The extraction team had better be waiting for me, Sitwell, I’m going to have half the base on my ass in about sixty seconds!’

He reached the southeast wall and scanned the area quickly; for one terrifying split-second, he saw nothing, then he caught the telltale ripple of air just below him. Flinging himself off the wall, he landed hard on the back of the cloaked Quinjet.

‘I’m on board, go, go, go!’ he yelled, and glanced up towards the ramparts, catching sight of the woman from earlier standing there, gun in hand. He couldn’t resist throwing her a wink and a cheeky salute as the Quinjet rocketed off, well out of pistol range.

In response, she held up her other hand, and he caught that white razor flash of a grin again under the shadow of her cap. She was holding a steel briefcase, identical to the one in his hands, as well as a small grey box with an aerial  – Clint squinted to get a better look – which looked very much like a –

‘Oh, _shit!_ ’ he yelled, and threw the suitcase away from the plane as hard as he could. In his ear, he could hear Sitwell screaming ‘ _Barton! What the FUCK-‘_

There was a massive explosion and a shockwave that rocked the Quinjet, as a considerable portion of Russian forest below them went up in flames.

There was complete silence for a moment. Sitwell finally broke it by asking: ‘ _Barton. Care to explain what, exactly, just happened back there?’_

‘They swapped the cases, sir,’ said Clint, climbing in through the roof hatch. ‘There was another operative among the guards – possibly KGB, although she might have been a merc, she didn’t say for sure either way. When I set off the flashbangs she must have switched the real plans out for a booby-trapped decoy.’

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ Sitwell said feelingly. ‘ _And now that they know we’re looking for them they’ll move the plans to a new location, probably under increased guard, so we can’t make a second attempt. Stark’s going to have fits when we tell him he has to re-code his entire new line of missiles to deal with the security breach._ ’

‘Yes, I feel very bad about interrupting the billionaire’s daily routine of blackjack and hookers to make him do the work that he’s contracted for.’ Clint drawled. ‘I’m more interested in this new asset of theirs, sir. She’s very, very good – she managed to almost take me down _and_ switch the cases in a zero-visibility environment within a minute, and she put two shots into my back at nearly a hundred yards.’ He winced as he shifted position. ‘She’d have dropped me if it wasn’t for the bulletproofing in the SHIELD uniforms – as it is, I’m going to have some impressive bruising.’

‘ _I’ll look into it_ ,’ Sitwell said. ‘ _If she’s that good, there’s bound to be some trace of this woman in the official records.’_

‘I don’t know that you need to bother,’ Clint said, pressing a bandage over his grazed shoulder. He grinned into the darkness of the cargo bay. ‘Someone with skills like that? I’ll bet we’re going to see her again.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that Clint/Coulson is the more popular pairing in fandom, but I was kind of fascinated by the Clint/Natasha relationship in Avengers, partly because of how little it was explored. I wanted to know what about Natasha made a skilled sniper and assassin want to bring her into the fold rather than taking her out as he was ordered, and what about Clint made a super-spy who relies on no one trust him. So this is my personal take on their relationship. 
> 
> It’s largely pre-MCU canon, with some 616 elements, but should be reasonably compliant – please feel free to let me know if there are any egregious errors. (Am betting it’ll end up Jossed by AoU, anyway.)
> 
> For reference, ‘Present Day’ in this fic is going to be before the first Iron Man movie, so Tony is still making arms, and none of the other Avengers are on the scene yet.  
> The Tracksuit Mafia are from the Hawkeye comic book, which you should read if you’re not already, it’s amazing. ‘Gopnik’ is the Eastern European version of white trash.


	2. Chapter 2

**Stuttgart, Present Day**

~

The only remarkable thing about the tiny suburban house currently occupied by ‘Carlton and Nancy Robertson’ was just how carefully unremarkable it was. Set in the middle of a row of identical houses in near-identical shades of beige, it was old enough for the cheap rendering to have cracked slightly near the base of the walls, the front lawn a little weedy and overgrown. The furniture was a mixture of IKEA-chic and a few old, obviously inherited pieces, with one bookshelf dotted with photo frames and tchotchkes and another crammed with well-thumbed paperbacks and the occasional magazine.

To a casual observer (that is to say, one who was unaware of the myriad weapons hidden in or under various furnishings), it would have looked to all appearances like the typical dwelling of a recently married couple. The only thing that might have struck them as odd was the absence of an alarm clock.

~

Natasha never bothered with an alarm. She’d long since finely honed her internal clock into a precision instrument and woke up precisely when she wanted to, like most highly trained spies.

Well, some spies, at least.

‘Clint,’ she hissed, jabbing his snoring, sprawled out form with an elbow. ‘Up.’

‘Aww, mornings,’ Clint moaned, rolling onto his back and pressing his hands over both eyes. ‘Why’m I the only one who has to go undercover at the army base?’

‘Because if our cover is ‘soldier married to a civilian’ we can run our base of operations out of an easily defensible house off-post instead of trying to run it out of military barracks,’ Natasha said reasonably, with a note of long-suffering patience, ‘and you’d make a terrible housewife.’

Clint grunted as he dragged himself upright and shuffled blearily towards the bathroom. ‘Are we even sure there’s anything to find here?’

‘Your octogenarian crime lord said the Army guns he was selling were coming from a contact in this city,’ Natasha reminded him. ‘Coulson passed on some hints that something bigger might be going on than a little arms trading, too. There was chatter about suspicious activity on the base, a higher than normal number of unexplained disappearances in the city, and some very high up international dignitaries visiting for a very small outpost. Communications division has suspicions there might be a HYDRA sleeper cell among the men on base.’

‘Communications always thinks it’s HYDRA,’ Clint argued around a mouthful of toothpaste, sticking his head back into the bedroom. ‘And then they send the Specialists in, and we collect the intel, and we give it to them and they run it through their fancy computers and let them go _beep boop_ for a couple of days. And then they come back to us and say _Sorry, guys, guess we were wrong_. Every damn time.’

‘Yes, but do you want to risk this being the one time they were right?’ Natasha said reasonably.

Clint made a grumbling noise as he turned on the shower. Natasha, with the ease of long practice, correctly interpreted it as _You’re right, but I refuse to admit that out loud._

‘I don’t know why _you’re_ complaining, Clint,’ she called, raising her voice to be carry over the sound of running water. ‘You’re the one who volunteered us for this one. I’ve never understood your thing for undercover missions.’

 

**Washington DC, Seven Years Ago**

~

‘I fucking hate undercover missions.’

 _‘Yes, so you’ve been telling us all evening,’_ said Hill over the comm. _‘Stop tugging at your collar, it makes you look like you’re uncomfortable.’_

‘I _am_ uncomfortable,’ Clint retorted. ‘I can barely move my fucking arms in this jacket, I feel more like a performing monkey than I did with the goddamned circus. Why couldn’t you have sent someone else in for this job? Coulson, maybe? He _likes_ suits.’

_‘He’s on assignment in Cuzco.’_

‘Fine, what about that old-money New England asshole who just made Level Six? He’d love it here, these are like, _his people_ , and he’d fit in a hell of a lot better than a hick kid from Iowa-’

 _‘If you mean Ward,’_ said Hill _‘he’s currently stationed in Georgia.’_

‘Perfect, just send a Quinjet to pick him up, he could be here in less than an hour.’

_‘The country, not the state, Barton.’_

‘Trip, then,’ said Clint desperately. ‘He’s got high enough clearance, he looks good in a tailcoat, and he’s fucking fantastic with intel gathering. He could charm half this crowd in the time it’d take me to get an in with just one of them.’

 _‘Not arguing with you on that, Hawkeye,’_ said Hill dryly, _‘but a black agent is possibly not the best person to cajole a bigoted good ol’ boy into telling us all about the white supremacist militia he’s secretly funding.’_

Clint sighed and attempted to shove his hands in his coat pockets, before realising with a grimace that they were sewn shut. ‘So you’re saying I’ve got no way out of this, then.’

 _‘Believe me, if there was_ any _other operative who was even remotely appropriate for this mission, we would have sent them in instead,’_ said Hill. _‘So I’m sorry if this outfit has too much sleeve for your taste, oh patron saint of tank tops, but you’re just going to have to suck it up and deal.’_

Clint scowled, and flipped the bird at the backup team through the closest security camera.

Washington in the full swing of the social season was opulent in its glory, swathes of silver and blue taffeta draping the walls of the oversized ballroom. Couples in tailcoats and ball gowns whirled across the dance floor beneath the twinkling lights of the pendent chandeliers or chattered in little factions at its periphery, raising their voices to be heard over the strains of the full string orchestra.

‘You know, this would be a lot easier if you’d just let me bring the guy in for questioning.’ Clint muttered quietly as he tramped down the stairs, wincing as the shrill laughter of a nearby gaggle of matrons reached a crescendo. ‘I could tranq him and have him in an interrogation room in half an hour.’

 _‘I’m sorry, did you miss the part where I said he was a ‘good ol’ boy’?’_ Hill snapped. _‘This is a very well connected man, Hawkeye. That means finding a way to get information out of him that doesn’t bring either the media or his lawyers down on our asses.’_

 Clint sighed. ‘Fine, but whatever this guy’s into better be worth me spending my Friday night in among these stick-up-their-ass rich bastards and their airheaded trophy wives-‘

A flash of red hair caught Clint’s eye as he scanned the room. The woman turned slightly as he watched, her face caught in profile against the cerulean drapes, and Clint’s eyebrows shot up.

To anyone else, she would have been indistinguishable from the cluster of satin-clad socialites surrounding her. Her red hair was darker than he’d last seen it, piled artfully atop her head, the military uniform had been exchanged for an elegant midnight blue ballgown, and a polite, slightly vacuous smile curled her perfect scarlet lips. But Clint hadn’t earned the name Hawkeye for nothing, and even from across the hall he recognised the woman he’d last seen in Russia, almost a year ago.

He wondered why she was here.

 _‘Clint?’_ said Hill in his ear, and he realised he’d been staring in silence for an uncomfortable length of time.

‘There’s another operative here,’ he murmured softly. ‘Someone I’ve run across before.’

Hill’s tone sharpened. _‘Are they a threat?’_

‘I don’t know,’ he said, frowning slightly. ‘She was working for Russia the last time I saw her, but their government doesn’t have any particular interest in anyone here tonight, do they?’

 _‘No more than usual,’_ said Hill. _‘Is she KGB, then?’_

‘Sitwell didn’t find any record of her in their personnel files,’ said Clint, his frown deepening. He came to a decision. ‘I’m going in. I want to know what she’s up to.’

He casually wended his way over to his mysterious redhead, ignoring Hill’s spluttering in his ear. As he approached he noticed that she was wrapped around the arm of a young man in faultless evening dress, who was gazing at her with an expression of vapid adoration. Clint grinned as he spotted the sparkling ring on her left hand, a spark of mischief flaring.

‘Darling!’ he said in his best Boston Brahmin accent, emerging from the crowd in front of her. ‘How unexpectedly lovely to meet you here, it’s been simply an age. You’re as stunning as ever, I see.’

She turned sharply at the sound of his voice, the mask of the wealthy debutante dropping for the slightest of seconds, and Clint’s grin widened.

‘Well, this _is_ a pleasant surprise!’ she said, recovering too quickly for her companion to notice the change. The guarded, wary look was wiped away and a bright, friendly smile took its place. ‘I haven’t seen you for so long, I was almost certain you were avoiding me.’

‘You should know better than that, my dear, surely,’ said Clint, taking her hand and kissing it. ‘Like the proverbial bad penny, I always turn up again.’

‘You must allow me to introduce my fiancé, Durrant Haymer,’ the woman said, smiling as she indicated the man on her left. ‘One of the Lassiter Haymers. Durrant, my love, this is an old acquaintance of mine, Mr-‘

‘Paul Adams, at your service,’ Clint said, reaching out to shake the man’s hand. _So he’s a Haymer – old money, pharmaceutical manufacturing mostly, no significant military ties. Interesting._ ‘Congratulations. You’re a very lucky fellow indeed. Now, my apologies, but I intend to steal away your lovely fiancée - for this next dance, at least.’

‘Yolie-‘ the man said worriedly, looking towards her.

‘It’s only a dance, sweetheart,’ she said, patting him on the arm. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes, I promise.’

Durrant still looked unhappy, but he made no protest as Clint led his fiancée to the dance floor, the orchestra striking up a waltz as he pulled her close.

Clint heartily disliked ballroom dancing, which he mentally filed in the same pretentious box as tailcoats and galas; only a modicum of natural grace had pulled him through the mandatory dance training at SHIELD Academy. His partner, however, was in a different league altogether; she moved gracefully through the steps of the waltz, her feet flicking lightly across the floor in counterpoint to his heavier tread.

‘You dance beautifully,’ he said, just loud enough for her still-watching fiancé to hear.

‘Ballet lessons as a child,’ she said with a smile, as they glided towards the centre of the dancefloor.

‘’Yolie’, huh?’ he muttered into her ear, lips barely moving. ‘I suppose it would be too much to hope that’s your real name?’

‘It’s as good as any for me,’ she said calmly, executing a graceful spin that brought her back around to face him. ‘You’re hardly in a position to throw stones, I think. I doubt Paul Adams is _your_ real name, either.’

‘My Bostonian accent isn’t nearly as good as my Russian one,’ he admitted easily. ‘Less chances to practice, I suppose.’

She pressed closer to him, her cheek brushing against his. This near to her, he could feel her breath ghosting over his neck, her long, dark eyelashes grazing his skin whenever she blinked.

‘I have a combat knife in a holster strapped to my thigh,’ she murmured, her voice flat and calm, lips almost touching the curve of his ear. ‘I could slide it between your ribs and be out of the room before your body even hit the ground.’

‘I have a particularly naggy superior agent in my ear listening to every word you say,’ Clint returned, turning his head slightly so she could see the almost invisible earpiece, ‘and a whole backup team on standby who would shoot you down before you made the door.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said noncommittally. ‘You’d still be dead.’

‘I think you’re smarter than that,’ Clint remarked, expertly steering them around a slow-moving elderly couple and dropping his partner into a deep dip. ‘Back in that fort in Russia, you could’ve just blown up the whole plane without giving me a chance to toss that bomb. You had to have known it was a black op, no one would have said a word officially. But you already had the plans safe and you knew we couldn’t make a second attempt, so you were practical enough to let us go rather than kill my team and get on the bad side of whichever agency I work for. And that’s why I doubt you’re going to kill me now – unless I get in your way, that is.’

The woman made a thoughtful noise. ‘You’re brighter than you look, Agent.’

‘I’m told that’s not difficult,’ Clint said wryly. He pulled her back upright and they resumed their graceful orbit around the floor.

‘I’m willing to call a truce,’ Clint continued. ‘I don’t know what your endgame is with the Haymers’ precious son, but he and his family have no connection to my mission tonight. I’ll keep out of your way if you’ll agree to do the same for me.’

She hummed for a minute, drumming the fingers of her left hand on his shoulder. ‘Who’s your mark tonight?’

‘Does it matter?’ said Clint, pulling back slightly to look sharply at her. ‘All you need to know is that it’s not Durrant Haymer.’

‘Like you said, I’m pragmatic,’ she said, rolling her eyes slightly. ‘You obviously don’t have the patience for a long con, so I’m assuming this is a simple intel grab. The faster you find your target, the faster you’re out of my hair.’

 _‘Barton, don’t you dare,_ ’ said Hill irately. He’d almost forgotten she was there for a moment. _‘We have no reason to trust this woman as far as we can throw her, and if our target learns we’re investigating him, we’re all in deep shit.’_

Clint hesitated for a second, but – there were a lot of people in the ballroom, and if she could point him in the right direction it’d save him a lot of time. ‘Tobias Cartland,’ he finally said, still watching her narrowly.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘He’s the gentleman with the red carnation in his buttonhole, at your eight o’clock, about twenty feet away. Salt and pepper hair, moustache that could poke your eyes out. He likes greyhounds, baccarat and scotch – any one of those topics will get you a conversational in with him.’

He turned casually in the direction she'd indicated as they spun past. That was Cartland, all right.

The orchestra’s melody diminuendo'd to its final chords, and she hesitated as they slowed to a halt on the dancefloor, their bodies still pressed close together. ‘Not that I feel obliged to help you,’ she said, ‘but is this about that band of toy soldiers he’s funding down South?’

Clint’s hands tightened on her fractionally.

‘I see,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Well, I doubt you’ll take my word for it, but you’re on a wild goose chase tonight.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Clint a little heatedly, feeling an obscure need to defend his agency’s competence. ‘We have hard evidence he’s been communicating with their leaders, and we _know_ he’s been buying their weapons, not to mention selecting their targets. We have phone records, bank transcripts, emails-‘

‘Oh, he’s certainly funding and directing them,’ she said airily, ‘but not in any way that would threaten national security. He’s just using them to sabotage his competitors’ factories.’

'Really,' said Clint sceptically. ‘You mind telling me how it is you know that?’

‘He comes around for drinks with Haymer Senior about once a month. It’s surprising what some of these good ol’ boys will say in the presence of a woman,’ she said, with the razor-sharp grin that he remembered. ‘Everyone knows we don’t have room in our pretty little heads for this kind of thing, so they’re much looser-lipped around us than they would be otherwise.’

‘Why would you tell me this?’ he asked warily, finally stepping away from her.

‘Call it a thank you,’ she said with an enigmatic smile. ‘You’ve sped up my timetable considerably tonight. After our little display on the dancefloor, I think that Durrant should be sufficiently jealous to give me anything I ask for - up to and including the codes for his family's vault. Now then, if you’ll excuse me.’

Clint watched her walk away until she was swallowed up by the crowd.

 _‘If that’s what you’re like when you flirt,’_ Hill commented in his ear, _’ I think I understand why your relationships always end in explosions.’_

Clint valiantly repressed the urge to flip her off again and moved towards the older man with his hand outstretched.

‘Mr Cartland?’ he said with a disarming smile, ‘Paul Adams, a pleasure to meet you, sir. I'm an old friend of Marcus Johnson, I believe he used to play baccarat with you in Monte Carlo…’

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand that’s chapter 2! Time between chapters might be a bit long, life is getting in the way. But next chapter’s already half done, and the chapter after that’s almost finished too, so they should be up soon. :)  
> Clint is much smoother here than he’s normally characterised because he’s still on his guard around Natasha; trust me, Walking Disaster Clint Barton will have his day.


End file.
